


All Bound Up in Sunlight

by Gileonnen



Series: while joined( Glass, Sky ) [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Bondage, Crucible Leaderboards, Established Relationship, Exhausting Immortality, Knifeplay, Lightplay, M/M, Multi, PWP, Pahanin and Cephalopods, The Thankless Task of Tanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 23:55:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: The Crucible is rough on Titans. After a grueling match, Praedyth and Pahanin show Kabr how much they appreciate him.





	All Bound Up in Sunlight

"Ha!" Pahanin crows, when the highlight reel finally flashes to the leaderboard. "4.1! New personal best!" He drags Praedyth into a kiss, hot and biting and victorious. The hard edge of his armor digs into Praedyth's ribs, but Praedyth is caught between exhaustion and elation, and every sharp sensation only sets his nerves alight.

Sai Mota snorts. "You might want to give your team a little credit," she says. "Easy to stay alive, when you've got a Warlock dropping rifts every time you take a bullet and a Titan throwing shields up while you reload."

"You're just jealous 'cause you're at 1.21," Pahanin carols, running a hand back through his long, sweat-dewed hair. He probably means it to look rakish and carefree, and the worst part is, it absolutely does.

Across the platform, Omar Agah just folds his hands behind his head and steps back to lean against the railing. "Incredible. It doesn't even bother me to lose to these jokers. I know they're going to turn on each other the second the match is over."

"That's the Crucible for you," says Pahanin. "It teaches you that any gathering of twelve can be an opportunity for murder."

Sai Mota gives Praedyth a commiserating look over Pahanin's shoulder. _Want me to stab him for you a little?_ she mouths, but Praedyth grins and shakes his head. "I need to hit the showers," she says aloud. "And frankly, so do the rest of you, Eriana excepted. If anyone wants to go for drinks later, you know where to find me."

The next Crucible match is already starting. Shaxx's voice echoes over the speakers. "I'm going to stay and watch a little," says Omar. "See if anyone taps out. I'll join you later."

For a moment, Praedyth wants it, too--wants to offer himself and Kabr and Pahanin up to make four, see if Eriana-3 and Wei Ning will stay and round them out to six, and then keep fighting until every resurrected muscle aches with Light. He wants to fight until he can barely stand, until they have to transmat him from the field because his body has given up.

In being taken apart and remade, he might find the culmination he seeks.

When he glances over at Kabr, though, his fervor dims. Kabr had taken the brunt of the blows meant for him and Pahanin, during that last clash. His armor is scored with still-smoking burns from Vell Tarlowe's flaming hammer, punctured into lace from a hail of submachine gun fire. His eyes are fixed on something beyond the screens--on the battlefield, maybe. On whatever he glimpsed between lives.

He would put himself in harm's way again, if that was what Praedyth wanted. It's what Kabr does. It's what a Titan does.

"We're headed home," says Praedyth. It comes out softer than he meant it to. "We could use a chance to clean up."

"Might join you later, but don't wait up," Pahanin adds. "Ugh, why am I so _tired_?"

"That's the problem with staying alive," Sai Mota says, with the air of one imparting great wisdom. "Eventually, you wear yourself out. Go take a nap, Pahanin. The bar will still be there."

"And so will you," Omar laughs. "Goodnight, everyone. Pleasure getting murdered by you again."

The rest of them say their goodbyes, promising drinks and more Crucible matches. Eriana-3 catches Praedyth's elbow before she and Wei Ning head out, reminding him that he owes her a data analysis on some scans she'd sent almost a month ago. Praedyth had nearly forgotten he'd asked for them. "I'll have them to you by the end of the week," he promises. The lights at the back of her mouth flutter, as though she's suppressed a snort of laughter.

Then they're packing onto the transmat pads in twos and threes, still chatting as the lights illuminate them from below. The blue glow picks out the hard edge of Pahanin's jaw, the curve of Kabr's lips. In that moment, before Praedyth steps onto the pad with them, they look alien and ethereal, like figures carved of steel and shadow.

Then they welcome him into their arms, and the last things he sees before transmat takes them are Pahanin's eyes still alight with victory and Kabr's crooked smile.

They bounce from an orbiting ship to the Last City, then walk to their flat in the crisp evening air. The road slopes down, through latticed alleyways twined with jasmine and bougainvillea and past cool fountains tiled with starbursts of blue and white. Praedyth's hand finds Kabr's as they walk, and Kabr's finds Pahanin's. Even when Pahanin slips his grip to punctuate a point with an emphatic gesture, his hand always falls back into place again.

Then, at last, home. As soon as the door shuts behind them, Praedyth strips off his boots and gloves, letting them fade away into data. He gives Kabr a hand with the catches of his heavy breastplate and pauldrons, and Pahanin kneels to help with the greaves. The metal looks even worse up close; when the breastplate comes away, Praedyth can't help tracing the patterns of bullet holes in Kabr's skintight undershirt. The singed edges crackle beneath his fingertips and leave black marks on his skin. Beneath them, Kabr's chest bears neither scar nor bruise.

Kabr folds his hand over Praedyth's. His palm is warm, rough with familiar calluses at the base of his fingers; it envelops Praedyth's completely.

His eyes meet Praedyth's, and there is such a heat in his gaze that Praedyth forgets to breathe.

The leg armor comes away in a series of jointed pieces and clatters to the floor. "I'd like to have a word with whoever designs Titan armor," Pahanin says, giving Kabr's greaves an exasperated nudge. "Unflattering, ungainly, and all but impossible to remove in a moment of passion."

"Is this a moment of passion?" Kabr asks. His voice is light, but Praedyth can feel how his heart quickens.

Pahanin sways up to his knees, still fully dressed; the leather armor hugs the hollows of his chest, his elegant wrists, his long lean legs. He smooths his hands up over Kabr's thighs and says, wicked-sweet, "It could be."

"Let us take care of you. Just this once." Praedyth leans in close, into the solid wall of Kabr's chest, and nuzzles up against the crook of his neck. Kabr smells of sweat and hot iron. Praedyth kisses down the taut muscle from jaw to clavicle, chasing the taste of salt until he feels a moan welling in Kabr's throat. His skin feels so unbearably fragile beneath Praedyth's teeth.

When Praedyth bites down, Kabr tilts his head back, offering himself up.

"How do you want this?" Pahanin asks. The back of his hand grazes Praedyth's hip and lingers there for one electric moment, and then his fingers knot in the waistband of Kabr's pants. Kabr's free hand eases out from between them, and from the soft gasp Pahanin makes, Praedyth knows Kabr has him by the hair. "Not complaining if you want more of the usual--not complaining _at all_ \--but I'd certainly enjoy stringing you up and ravishing you."

Kabr's laughter comes out shuddering; every scrape of Praedyth's teeth makes his breath stutter. "I thought you were tired," he manages.

"Second wind."

For a moment, Kabr holds himself still, as though he's drinking in the sensation of being held and touched and kissed. His fingers lace through Praedyth's. There's something urgent in the way he presses their hands together--as if there's a way of holding him that would link them Light to Light.

He never asks to be caught between the two of them, but Praedyth knows that, sometimes, he craves it.

"All right," says Kabr at last. He tips his head down, brow to Praedyth's brow. His breath gusts hot across Praedyth's mouth. "Gently, though."

"Gentle as a breeze," promises Pahanin. "But implacable as a cephalopod's embrace."

Praedyth can't help laughing. "You must bring cephalopods into everything--"

"It was completely context-appropriate!" His palms slide up under Kabr's shirt, over his broad stomach and the wide cage of his ribs, and Kabr sucks in a sharp breath. "If you can't bring up many-armed horrors of the deep during a bondage scene, when _can_ you?"

"This explains a lot about your sexual proclivities."

"And yet here you are." Pahanin grins up from the floor, as much for Praedyth as for Kabr. In the warm light of their front room, Praedyth finds himself enchanted anew by Pahanin's hooded eyes and thick lashes, the graceful hook of his nose, his dark skin lustrous with Light.

"Because I love you, you ridiculous man," says Praedyth. He cards his fingers through Pahanin's long hair, his knuckles grazing Kabr's. "Squids and all."

When Praedyth catches Kabr's hand, Kabr lets himself be caught. He lets his hands be brought together, gathered up, raised above his head; his wrists are so thick that it takes both of Praedyth's hands to hold them together, but Kabr is pliant as a reed beneath his touch.

When Kabr looks at him like this, his lips eagerly parted and his dark eyes shining with trust, Praedyth understands a little of the pleasure that Kabr takes in taking care of them.

Praedyth lets Light gather in the wells of his palms. It flares red-golden at first through the thin veil of his skin--he glimpses bone and blood, watches every trembling pulse drawn in surging red light like forge fire. It almost aches to hold so much of it at once, the way it aches to be on the verge of remembering something forgotten. The Light craves a purpose, and he draws it out into coils of golden wire until solar energy spills through every crack between his fingers.

He loops rivulets of Light around Kabr's wrists, his arms, the broad bow of his shoulders. Those bright strands drip from Kabr's sun-brown skin like ropes of gold, and Praedyth slowly binds them together into knots of warmth and radiance. The fine, dark hair on Kabr's arms curls at the heat. He tenses in his bonds, testing their strength. "Does it hurt?" Praedyth asks, when the last knot slides closed. He lays his hand along Kabr's cheek and feels the warmth of his palm bleeding into the skin.

Kabr turns to kiss his hand. "It's a good hurt."

"Good." With a last thick thread of Light, Praedyth raises Kabr's arms high above his head and anchors them there--then draws him up still further, until his shoulder blades tighten and his toes strain for purchase on the floor.

By now, Pahanin is on his feet, leaning back against a side table with his hip cocked out and his arms folded. There's an appraising look in his eyes, as though Kabr is a sculpture he's commissioned. "Satisfied?" Praedyth asks.

"Not quite." Pahanin slides a knife out of his boot and closes the gap, cutting Kabr's shirt from neck to waist in one neat slash. He makes swift work of the sleeves and peels the wreckage of the undershirt away, then tosses it aside.

 _We could've mended that,_ Praedyth thinks, but then that knife is retracing the line of Kabr's sternum, and that thought evaporates. Kabr's back arches with the strain of staying upright; every muscle is taut, caught in an attitude of flexion. His cock strains against the waistband of his pants, and Praedyth's mouth goes dry at the thought of cutting him free. "Gentle," he reminds Pahanin.

Pahanin lays his blade flat against Kabr's chest and leans in--they're of a height now, with Kabr on his toes, and when Pahanin rises to the balls of his feet, he can whisper right in Kabr's ear. "I won't cut him unless he asks for it," he says. It's so soft, so intimate, that Praedyth can't help a sympathetic shiver. "And if he asks for it, I will cut him so, so gently."

Kabr's eyes drift closed. He cants his head into Pahanin's, pressing cheek to cheek. "I want it." His voice is little more than a warm rumble on the charged air. "And I want to be healed."

Praedyth steps up behind Kabr and wraps his arms around him, supporting his weight. He kisses down his spine, lingering at every freckle and every ancient scar. "I'll hold the rift open as long as I can," he promises, and gathers the dregs of his Light around them all.

There comes the scent of blood, and Kabr jerks in his arms. He cries out, harsh and broken as he never lets himself be on the battlefield, and for a moment Praedyth is afraid they've done something they can't undo.

Then the rift opens, and Kabr relaxes with a gasp and a sigh. Light pours into Praedyth's weary body. His heart quickens; his skin warms, as though he's standing in a pool of sunlight.

They fall into a rhythm--the blade and the cry and the embrace to soothe it, the rush of breath and the shifting of weight. "You're doing so well," Pahanin says against Kabr's mouth, and that draws a shudder out of him that Praedyth feels as though it's his own. "So strong and sure. Unbroken. Unbreakable. There's nothing you can't endure."

"You're beautiful like this," Praedyth whispers. His fingertips dip beneath the waistband of Kabr's pants, glancing over the slick head of his cock. The tight, caught little sound that Kabr makes goes straight to Praedyth's loins. "Wrapped in Light, just for us."

"Beautiful," echoes Pahanin. A hiss of metal on leather, and then Praedyth feels him easing the waistband down. "Praedyth, could you help me out here? Sort of a big job for one person."

Reluctantly, Praedyth lets go and comes around to kneel at Kabr's feet. There are patterns of drying blood on Kabr's scarless chest; his face is drawn, dark and harrowed and wild. Praedyth knows well that pleasure, so keen that it approaches agony.

Pahanin kisses the angle of Kabr's hip, the smooth curve of his stomach, the flushed head of his cock. He laps up precome with his eyes half-closed, as though savoring the taste. Praedyth leans in to kiss him with Kabr's cock pressed between them, a rough glorious mess of a kiss that leaves them both panting into each other's mouths.

They take it in turns to suck Kabr off--Pahanin fierce and eager, Praedyth achingly slow. When at last Kabr spills himself in Praedyth's mouth, he falls limp in his bonds with a groan that sounds as though it was drawn from the very root of him.

Pahanin catches Praedyth's chin and licks into his mouth before he can swallow, and Praedyth loses himself in the searing hunger of that kiss. Pahanin's palm curls to fit Praedyth's cock through his clothes, the heel of his hand pressing hard enough to hurt. It's everything Praedyth needs, and he ruts against Pahanin's hand until he shudders apart.

When he gathers himself up again, the rift has faded. He lets the loops of golden light loosen slowly, easing Kabr's body to the floor.

"Need a glass of water?" Pahanin asks as he helps arrange Kabr with his back against the sofa.

"Please," Kabr manages. "Thank you."

Pahanin climbs to his feet and vanishes into the kitchen. While the cup fills, Praedyth crawls over to lay his head in Kabr's lap, and Kabr absently strokes his hair. There are indentations in his wrists where the bonds were wrapped around them; Praedyth reaches up to follow their lines with a fingertip. "Was that good?" he asks.

"It was," Kabr answers. His voice is still raw, but there's an edge of fondness to it that eases whatever lingering tension Praedyth had been holding.

Pahanin returns with three glasses of water, which he sets on the floor beside them. He curls up at Kabr's other side and shifts around until he's got Kabr's arm around his shoulders, his head pillowed against Kabr's chest.

"Sure you don't need me to give you a hand?" Kabr asks, nudging Pahanin a little.

Pahanin just laughs and takes a long drink of his water. "I think I'll take you up on that later--but we've got an invitation to drinks tonight, and Sai Mota was right. We all badly need a bath."


End file.
